To Glenn Beck and the Tea Party new comers:

"Government is the coming together of people to do for one another collectively what they could not do as well or at all privately through the market system or philanthropy." - Abraham Lincoln (liberal!)   

“People” coming together as a “collective,” disrespecting our market system and the failures of “philanthropy?” Does that quote sound like something a conservative would say? No of course not. It sounds socialist and practically communist. In the 1860s the fairly new Republican party was comprised mostly of members with Liberal ideals. And the Democratic party members had conservative ideals. A lot of people who study American history know that, but you newbies to politics choose to not find that out, or you are just in denial. Even your leader Glen Beck didn't know that when he chose the Lincoln memorial for your fall rally in 09. There have been party ideology switches this century in the baby boomer generation, such as the conservative democrats flight to change parties after the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (the act that effectively ended legal segregation in our nation). Go ahead ask somone! The quotation above is famous in Liberal circles and was said by Abraham Lincoln (See "Lincoln's Hands," his original manuscript). If you folks, who praise President Lincoln, and think he represented your party today, knew this to begin with, you would not have been making fools of yourselves in front of the Lincoln memorial and in the minds of US historians, intellectuals and liberals, 8 out of 10 Phds, 94% of all scientists, and half of our politicians. It is apparent to me that Tea Partyers and conservatives really only like Lincoln because he freed the slaves (something that Liberals had wanted for for decades). And if they praise Lincoln then that provides cover from the media so that the conservative right doesn’t look as if they are racists. And with President Lincoln in their pockets they can attract more African American members, from somewhere. The racism of the right wing is pretty clear because of the right’s hatred for a black president who is doing less damage and more reform, that helps all citizens, than the white conservative president before him had ever done in 8 years. Where was the tea party while the white President Bush was adding more than 3 trillion dollars to our national debt for two wars that were not even necessary? Where was the Tea Party when that white President Bush gave tax cuts to rich people without even making up for it anywhere else in his budgets! President Bush was a tax and spend Republican. So was the white Ronald Reagan who tripled our national debt. Why were the Tea Partiers not carrying posters of the white George Bush as a black African witchdoctor with a bone through his nose at their tax day march? Answer: deep down inside, hidden from political correctness of our society, a black president is an affront to the sensibilities of a true conservative.

By pretending to embrace Lincoln’s party politics you conservatives are warping history. Don’t you care that students learn true facts about our past? Or does that concern mean less to you than boosting your roles by hiding behind a liberal. A liberal Lincoln who clearly used “big government,” to better the United States as whole, when the states had continuously failed to better themselves and bring fairness to their citizens?

Our government representatives have not spent 234 years passing laws willy nilly for the fun of it. Tea Partiers and other conservatives go ahead and study President Lincoln’s record of laws passed. While you are studying Lincoln’s ideals and ask yourselves which federal government laws existing today used to be run just fine without Lincoln’s ideal of what our government really is? Ask yourselves which federal laws can you honestly say were not even needed before they were created, and why were they needed, and do those problems that cause us to write laws, remain today? What were the continuing failures of small governments and individuals that caused our representatives to come together for nationwide solutions? You can also contemplate which specific laws you want to get rid of now that you think that the problems that they had addressed can be handled well at the local level? Look at your past and find evidence that supports your beliefs that the big bad government can’t do anything right. The truth is our Democratic Republic has a centralized government that does a hell of lot more good for its citizens than a pack of conservative governors running around in circles, mostly ending up where their state had started from.

At your convention last year, 80% of the audience when asked if “you have ever been involved in politics before?” raised their hands to answer no. This ignorance is really making you guys look foolish. Tea Partiers and other conservatives should return to school, take civics and United States history. Perhaps you could make a new website called Government as Seen through Tea Party Tainted Glasses.”It is an established maxim and moral that he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false is guilty of falsehood, and the accidental truth of the assertion does not justify or excuse him.”

-- Abraham Lincoln, chiding the editor of a Springfield, Illinois, newspaper

Great Expectations to Get Out of Iraq

Hypothetically, what would you say if a new political party took over congress, and within five months managed to pass a bipartisan bill that was signed by the president, that arranged for an end to the occupation of Iraq? Would you stomp your feet and whine that it “took too long?” Would you complain about the bills’ bi-partisan characteristics and its Republican party allowances, like leaving permanent bases behind? Maybe you would quietly acknowledge a job well done and say something like “now that’s representation!”

Whatever you said in the above hypothetical, the fact that it happened at all and so soon, would have been amazing. To expect that kind of expediency in the kind of complex situation that is the Iraq occupation would indeed be a great expectation. It would be a great expectation for our Congress, designed the way it has been, with two distinct houses and a then an executive branch that must sign off on everything completed. Our legislature moves slow the way its supposed to go.

The grassroots of the Democratic party as of late, would take the complaining route whether a successful bill to get out of Iraq was bi-partisan or not. Democrats are heard complaining because expression is the first step in getting something accomplished, especially something that has been out of one’s control per say. Democrats are also heard complaining because they know what to complain about, they are more likely to be informed in full than they other side, and that information comes in the form of nuanced understanding and not simplistic or shallow arguments.

No one said that invading and occupying a sovereign nation in the Middle East would be easy. More importantly, anyone who had a half decent mind for foreign policy would have said that getting out of such a situation(a quagmire) would be impossible to do satisfactorily. 

Politically getting out is impossible to do without unilateral strong arming in congress and even that requires the physical presence of a veto proof majority.

Technically getting out is impossible to do without leaving the spoils of the illegal war behind. The empire thinkers in the Republican party won’t let us leave without an oil arrangement we can live with (like most of the oil for American corporations and a lock on pumping facilities). They won’t let us leave without allowing permanent military bases dotted throughout the sands of Iraq. 

Democratic Party Wimps?

Lets recall how we got into this mess. Bush and his cronies fixed the intelligence around a goal of invading Iraq, i.e. yellow cake uranium, Colin Powell’s presentation of fictional threats to the U.N., Cheney on television scaring the bejeezus out of everyone.

To address the threat congress is offered up a Use of Force Resolution against Saddam Hussein. The Republican controlled congress, who wrote the bill, passed the bill. Most Democratic representatives voted against it in both houses. Keep in mind the intelligence was fixed, this fact was revealed by the release of the Downing Street Memos. So much so that intell privy to a certain few members of congress was also the “fixed” version of events and applied facts.

Asking of a representative today, who voted the resolution in 2003 “if you could, would you vote for the resolution again?” Might very well receive the response “yes I would.” Because the intelligence was fixed. If a congressperson believed what he or she saw then (what they were allowed to see), then they would have to believe it again today, they would have no choice. 

The resolution provided for the use of force if there is either no cooperation from Saddam Hussein or if there is actual weapons stockpiles found. The resolution clearly stipulates that the United Nations is to be involved wholly in the endeavor to search for WMDs, with the U.S. attending and receiving votes from the U.N. Security Council, not once, but twice, after inspections, and again before force is used. Finally nearly a year of U.N. and U.S. monitored weapons inspectors combing the entire country looking for signs of weapons of mass destruction. With Saddam Hussein’s full cooperation, as testified to by the chief inspector. George W. Bush acted without the U.N. resolutions, violating international law already agreed upon. He violated the promise of congressional resolution. He used the U.N. and then violated the promises made to the member nations. He had lied to Congress at the State of the Union address a few months earlier. The war was now as illegal as it could get. 

So now we’re in and finding it nearly impossible to get out and that should come as no surprise. My fellow liberals must lower their expectations to quell their emotions, but at the same time keep up the pressure on Congress.